


Bowsprit

by lnles



Category: Rectify (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 12:24:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20546132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lnles/pseuds/lnles
Summary: Once you've shared a mystic dream experience with someone, it's not so easy for them to just vanish completely from your life. Tawney and Daniel find each other again, some years later, and perhaps go forward together.





	1. A Happy Accident

Tawney had her own apartment now. She was rather proud of it too. Not that it was anything to write home about, though she did write home about it to everyone she could think of. It was hers, was the thing. She signed the lease herself, she paid the rent every month, and she chose every single thing inside it, from the bed (a full size mattress and everything) to the silverware (every piece had a little flower embossed on the handle, and she liked the way it felt on her fingertips).

There were things about the apartment that weren’t ideal, certainly. The fact that it was largely underground, for one. It wasn’t technically a basement apartment, but only because the apartment building itself was built around a circular depression in the ground, with a greasy green pond at the center. Sometimes Tawney imagined it was actually a crater caused by a space rock come crashing to earth, or maybe an angel.

Her somewhat recessed dwelling did have a backyard of sorts, in that there was a glass doorwall in the living room (which was also the kitchen and the dining room) which led out onto a concrete pad surrounded by slightly unruly grass, mowed almost every week. The property manager had described the patio as “overlooking the pond”, but since the pond and the patio were at roughly the same elevation, Tawney considered that a slight exaggeration. She didn’t mind it, though. She just thought it was funny. She would have gotten the place either way, and she liked being able to walk right out of her apartment and around the pond, but the rules of real estate, the rules of salesmanship, meant the property manager had to invent new words and ideas just to puff up what was, all things considered, a relatively run-of-the-mill apartment.

Tawney filed this line of thinking with many others, as a Daniel thought. Thoughts like this, thoughts that questioned why so many things in the world were shaped and carried out so strangely, had always come upon Tawney, before and after she knew Daniel, but Daniel was the one who made her think she should let them blossom into all the questions they could be. Before Daniel, Tawney kept all these questions folded up quietly within her like a flock of origami cranes. Now she let them fly, even if it was usually still only in her own mind.

Whatever strategies had been used to sell her on the place, Tawney was really very happy in her new apartment. She often caught herself humming as she tidied the place. There wasn’t much to tidy, not really, but she could make an hour’s work of it if she tried, moving her few pictures and little decorative bits from shelf to shelf, dusting as she went. Sometimes she switched everything from one room to another, just because she could. It was a delightful feeling.

Tawney even had guests over once, her upstairs neighbors. Callie and Faith were very nice. They brought a kind of a garlic dip and carrots when they came to meet her. The dip would be a little spicy for Paulie, but Tawney wasn’t in Paulie anymore, so she ate quite a bit of it (truth be told, it was a little spicy for her too, but she wasn’t going to let Callie and Faith know that). Both women were just a little bit older than Tawney, and both of them worked at the nearby elementary school, Callie as a teacher and Faith as a librarian. As soon as Faith saw Tawney’s little bookcase with its six lonely books on the very bottom shelf, she had a million recommendations for Tawney, until Tawney started taking notes on a piece of scrap paper. Later she put the paper on the fridge, checking off books as she read them. It was satisfying to see the list get shorter and the bookcase get fuller, though every time Tawney saw Faith, the other woman gave her yet another book to add to the list, after getting all Tawney’s thoughts on the last one, of course.

Callie also greeted Tawney every time they passed each other in the parking lot. Three or four times Tawney even stepped in to help her carry boxes of glue and glitter to her car, or piles of ungraded assignments into the apartment. Whenever Tawney gave Callie a hand, Callie offered her a coke and a sit-down (though Callie always called soft drinks pop, because she was from somewhere even farther north than here). Tawney usually accepted, unless she was on her way somewhere, because Callie told such nice stories. Probably that was what made her such a good teacher. At least Tawney imagined Callie must be a good teacher.

So Tawney was very happy with her upstairs neighbors. And she had met the family across the hall once or twice, though they didn’t seem to have time to slow down for anything, but that must be what it’s like, Tawney reasoned, being the mother of two kids on your own like Charlene was.

Tawney didn’t know her next door neighbor, though, which was odd because they shared her concrete pad of a patio, not to mention the entire back wall of her bedroom. But whoever they were, they never came out when Tawney was around and their blinds were always closed. Maybe they worked nights and slept during the day.

Tawney wondered how she would do working nights at the hospital. It seemed very lonely, to wake up when everyone was eating dinner and go to bed as everyone started breakfast. The only people you’d ever see would be at the McDonald’s Drive-Thru and at work. She was happy with the way things were now, with neighbors to greet and friends at her new church and all the other nurses at the hospital to talk to, when they weren’t busy elbow deep in blood or vomit.

She was happy this way for three months, until she finally met her next-door neighbor. Later, Tawney would wonder if this had been part of the plan, this little grace period given to her so she could fall in love with the place and the life before the change came.

Tawney sat out on her patio almost every night after dinner, enjoying the air (though winter was impending and she wasn’t sure how cold it might get, or if she’d like the cold). She had a little plastic deck chair and a little plastic end table and, thanks to Faith, she always had a book to read. But there was one day when she didn’t feel much like reading, so when she went out, she decided to feed the ducks instead. There were quite a few ducks in residence at the apartment pond, and they feared no son of Adam or daughter of Eve. They hadn’t gotten the memo about who had dominion over whom. The ducks congregated on the patio with Tawney, quacking contentedly as they pecked at the birdseed scattered around Tawney’s chair. She herself sat with her legs tucked up against her chest, out of the ducks’ reach, wisdom gained through hard lessons about the communication skills and patience of waterfowl.

One of the ducks let out a new, melancholic honk, louder than usual, and Tawney heard the whoosh of a doorwall opening. She was aware of another person, standing not too far away, but she decided not to look at them yet. With the moment finally at hand, Tawney was a little scared to meet her next-door neighbor. What if they ruined her happy record of friendly people on all sides? She was just getting used to the comfort of it.

“Hello, Tawney.”

The voice was shocking and electrifying, like cold water all down your back on a hot summer day. She didn’t believe it and she wanted so desperately to believe it that she thought she might just run back inside instead of looking. She would pretend that this moment never happened. Maybe she would pretend this was a dream. Tawney had had dreams like this before, though they were usually much stranger.

No. It was stupid to turn away. It could not be him because that would be silly. It would be like something out of a book or a TV show.

Tawney stood and turned around, smoothing out the folds of her dress if only to lengthen the time before she had to look up.

It really was him. It really was Daniel.

He was older now, but then again so was she. There was grey in Daniel’s hair, woven in among the brown, and new lines running across his face. Tawney was glad to see that a number of them were the children of smiles, folds worn into the corners of Daniel’s eyes and mouth that pointed perpetually up. They reminded her of Daniel’s mother on a good day. Daniel and Janet both looked upon the world in such loving way, when their minds weren’t millions of miles away.

“It is you.” Daniel smiled as he spoke, and made Tawney the lucky recipient of that loving look. Tawney had seen him turn the same gaze on pecan groves and insects and Renaissance paintings, but she didn’t feel lessened by that company. If anything, it was an honor, to still be one of the things that delivered joy into Daniel’s world, a world that had been barren for so long.

“Daniel.” It was all Tawney could think to say. What else needed to be said? There was simultaneously far too much and far too little to tell him. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”

“I can hardly believe it’s me either, some days.”

“You look well, Daniel. Full of life,” Tawney said, because it was true. It wasn’t just the lines on his faces. He was dressed in the simple way he always had, a plain button-up shirt and plain pants, but both were clean and nicely ironed. His hair was combed and his face shaved, like someone with a job, an apartment, and plenty of reasons to live. He looked like someone who was thankful to see every day.

“As do you, Tawney. As do you.”

Tawney blushed. Really she must look a mess. Her dress wasn’t much more than a glorified nightgown, white with little pink flowers. She hadn’t even brushed her hair since that morning. “I doubt that. I only just got home from work an hour ago. I haven’t had time to-to recollect myself yet.”

“I think that the work you do must be very fulfilling then. You look like someone who is glad to be here.”

“I am glad,” said Tawney. She looked straight into Daniel’s eyes, hoping her sincerity would be clear and obvious. Daniel looked back, his attention warm with intensity. “I’m very glad to see you too, Daniel.”

“Not nearly as glad as I am to see you. Though I did spot you before a few times, from far away. Crossing the parking lot or walking around the pond. I didn’t think it could truly be you,” he said.

“Why didn’t you come over and find out for sure?” Discomfort and irritation prickled at Tawney’s heart, familiar displeasures. That was very like Daniel: to wonder and wonder about a possible miracle, but hang back, afraid of its richness. Afraid it could be real.

His smile gained a tiny twinge of sadness, a thinning and softening of his lips. It was a small change, but it altered everything. “I’m not an entirely new man, you know. Just a slightly improved one. I hope,” he said, throwing the last two words on the end like they were a joke. Tawney knew they were sincere. After all these years, he still had his doubts.

“I’m glad you came now.” One of the ducks wandering between them paused and let out another soft quack. It was a very mournful sound for such a silly creature. Tawney wondered what was the secret pain of ducks, and, seeing Daniel watching the fat little bird just as closely, set the thought free. “What do you think he’s so sad about?”

“I’m afraid his family’s suffered a terrible loss.”

“That’s a shame.”

“It was his father.” Daniel’s voice remained flat as he spoke, but Tawney noticed a little tug at the corners of his mouth, bringing his smile back into the realm of unadulterated pleasure. Tawney prepared herself for a punchline, waiting with bated breath for what would follow. “A boomerang accident. The boomerang came roaring back around, and our friend here tried to warn his father. ‘Duck!’ he said. His father’s last words: ‘Who isn’t?’. And then it was over."

The duck stared up at Daniel and his hands, empty of birdseed as they were, and let out another mournful quack. Tawney giggled. “You’re bringing up bad memories for him.”

“I can point him to a good therapist or two, if he needs it,” said Daniel, matching the duck’s demanding gaze with his own placid one. “Do you always attract such a crowd out here?”

“Not always,” Tawney said, scattering the last of her birdseed into the grass, drawing the ducks away from the patio, from herself and Daniel. “Just when I feel like being bothered.”

“And today you discovered a new level of bothered. A research breakthrough, I imagine.”

“You aren’t bothering me, Daniel.” Tawney took a step forward, but stopped herself there. The boundaries between the two of them were fuzzy, fuzzier even than when they’d met. Then there had been a certain amount of clarity, a flat standard distance they always ought to maintain, a distance which they kept on collapsing over and over, no matter how hard they tried.

The rules were entirely different now. With the other barriers lifted, Tawney found that the barriers within her, the confusion, pain, and uncertainty that made up her essential self, these had all been strengthened, made as impenetrable as the walls of Troy.

Daniel nodded. “I’m happy to hear that. Very happy.” He glanced back at his apartment door, standing open. A moth dodged in as they watched, a small grey-brown flicker against Daniel’s white slatted blinds. “Oh, now he’ll be in there for days.”

“It’s not so hard to get them out, you know,” said Tawney. “Do you have a flashlight?”

Daniel pursed his lip and Tawney could almost see all his belongings running through his mind. No doubt he knew them all by heart. He still didn’t seem like the sort of person to have much of anything. When Daniel’s eyes flicked back to her, Tawney saw a hint of embarrassment in them. “I’m afraid to admit that I do not currently possess a flashlight, though how this gap in my inventory came about, I’m not sure.”

“That’s alright. I have one.” Tawney ducked back into her apartment and went to the kitchen. The bottom drawer beside the sink held everything that didn’t have a specific home in Tawney’s apartment, including her flashlight. She was glad to see it there among the assortment. Nothing in her apartment was lonely, even if it didn’t have quite the right place yet.

Tawney took the flashlight and slid the drawer shut again. At the edge of the little square of linoleum that designated the boundaries of the kitchen, she paused. What did it mean for Daniel to have reappeared in her life so suddenly and so strangely? The question of strangeness answered itself, since it was Daniel after all, but the question of meaning she couldn’t make out.

Through her own doorwall, Tawney saw him standing out there. He wasn’t looking at her. He was watching the pond as the disappointed ducks, sensing an end to the birdseed, retreated to the pond. One at a time they slid into the water, floating serenely at its surface like little boats. But beneath the water Tawney knew their orange feet were paddling wildly, straining to push their placid bodies around.

Tawney took the flashlight and returned to the patio, closing the door behind her. Daniel nodded, and gestured to his own open apartment, allowing her to step through before him. The experience was uncanny: the floorplan of Daniel’s apartment was the inverse of her own, his kitchen and living room sharing the wall of her bedroom, and his bedroom beside the front door. Daniel’s surrealist sense of interior decoration added to this free-floating sense of strangeness. He had evidently given up on traditional furniture forms, except for a couch and an armchair. Both were hideously upholstered in bold, vintage nineties prints. Otherwise, Daniel was improvising his furniture in the form of stacks of books, books piled high in every corner, and nearly every pile bearing a lamp or a tchotchke or a pile of papers. Tawney was surprised to see that one pile played host to a small flatscreen TV.

The moth sat contentedly on the overheard lamp. Daniel glared up at it. “They always land there. It’s a favorite spot of theirs.”

“Moths do like the light,” said Tawney, turning on her flashlight with one hand and turning off the overhead lamp with the other. For a second the moth beats its wings discontentedly, confused about the decline of its formerly primo real estate, which was now just a rapidly cooling curve of glass. Then it dropped from the lamp, landing on the face of Tawney’s flashlight.

Shot through with light in the twilit apartment, the moth was now a holy thing. It glowed red and living on the top of the flashlight, slants of light pressing up against it and pouring out around it. It beat its brown wings once, slowly.

“I need you to help me, Daniel,” said Tawney, tilting the flashlight towards him slowly and gently. Daniel watched her, brows knit and eyes narrowed, awaiting orders.

“Whatever you say. You’re leading this mission.”

“I need you to cup your hands over the flashlight so it doesn’t fly away when we move.”

Daniel reached out, hands already held in two shallow arcs. He closed his hands over the face of the flashlight and the moth resting there with surpassing gentleness.

“That was good,” Tawney said. “You don’t want to restrain it too much, and you don’t want to touch its wings.”

“I imagine the wings of any creature are the most delicate part.” Daniel slowly spread his fingers apart, allowing them both to watch the moth. It sat flat and unmoving on the flashlight, content or terrified, Tawney wasn’t sure. Daniel’s fingers glowed a deeper red gold than the body of the moth. With the flashlight shining through them, his hands were the rich color of blood and life.

“We’ve got to get it out of the house now,” said Tawney. “Before it gets too nervous, or gets away.”

Daniel bowed his head to her, smiling. “You lead and I’ll follow.”

Tawney stepped forward, just one step, and Daniel mirrored her. She took another step, and so did Daniel. He was really only taking half-steps, trying to match hers, and so they were slow together, crossing his living room without trampling any loose books or other important-looking debris. There was evidence, Tawney noticed, of what might be feline intervention in Daniel’s organizational efforts: stacks tipped as if something had leapt off them, pieces of paper with small half moon indentations, and on Daniel’s right hand a set of round puncture wounds that must have come from either the world’s smallest vampire or a normal cat.

“Do you have a cat, Daniel?” Tawney asked, taking the step down onto the patio carefully, settling one foot into place and then the other.

“Yes, a cat…happened to me, you could say,” Daniel replied, following each of her steps, pressing his foot into exactly the place where hers had been.

“Happened to you?”

“She was in need, and I too was needy.” Daniel looked pointedly at the bite mark on his hand. “Her name is Mister Biten, for the obvious reason.”

“Perhaps I won’t rush to meet Mister Biten then,” said Tawney, leading him closer to the edge of the pond. “Though I wonder why she doesn’t take care of your moths.”

“Oh, she does. But I don’t have much stomach for brutality these days,” Daniel said. With a nod from Tawney, he lifted his hands from the light. Tawney flipped the switch, darkening the flashlight, and the moth took off without a moment’s prompting, floating high into the air against the purple-blue sky. It moved into the distance until it became nothing, and Tawney’s sight was flooded by the clouds, scorched a glorious orange by the setting sun. They were so beautiful they seemed to be doing it on purpose, glowing with heavenly light in direct defiance of the dully suburban roofs and treetops crowding up towards the sky.

“That was lovely,” said Daniel, still watching the spot where the moth had dissolved from sight. “Though I don’t know that you really needed my help.”

“I didn’t want to disempower you,” Tawney replied, drawing the word up from an introductory psych class. “You’ll need these skills the next time a moth gets in.”

“Now that I know you’re my neighbor, I may just call you instead.”

“And what’ll you do if I’m not home?” said Tawney, imagining a forlorn Daniel accompanied by an identically forlorn and bedraggled cat, both of them scratching fruitlessly at her door.

“I can’t say. Now that you’ve reappeared in my life, I’m not sure how I got along without you all these years.” Daniel tensed, his posture closing itself up against her, a fortification against sore memories. “Moth-wise, I mean.”

“Well, first things first you should go and get a flashlight,” said Tawney, running her finger over the ridges of the flashlight’s on-switch. She kept her voice light and joking, but inside a hundred contradictory impulses tore at her, pulling her to and from Daniel in equal measure. “I bet they have them at that Target across the way.”

“I’m sure they do,” Daniel replied, finally looking at her again, and with a smile. “I don’t know how Amantha let me get away with living in such a state of deprivation. You should have seen the list of essential emergency supplies she sent me when I began my solitary lifestyle.”

“She must have been on to something,” said Tawney, choosing not to pick up Daniel’s choice of “solitary”. “Look at how helpless you’ve become without the necessities. You’re lucky I still follow the list Teddy gave me when we got married.”

Daniel’s face fell. He drew in a long breath as if he were about to speak, but stopped, pursing his lips. Tawney had a feeling she knew what he wanted to say, and that it was important she not say it for him. Eventually Daniel spoke: “I’m sorry to ask this. I know it can’t be easy to talk about. But…do you still talk to Ted? Do you know how he’s doing?”

Tawney couldn’t keep her eyes on Daniel any longer. She gave her feet a careful examination, counting the blades of grass sticking up between her toes. When she looked back to Daniel, she found his expression so sad, so filled with bitter remorse, that she wanted to go to him and assure him that all mistakes are forgiven, all wrongs undone in the end. He had done the same for her once, and she had never forgotten.

Remembering what had passed between Daniel and Teddy also made her wish to retreat into her apartment and never come out again, especially not for Daniel.

Tawney picked a compromise instead. She forced herself to look at Daniel’s stricken face and offer him what she could. Not absolution, but forgiveness. Acceptance.

“I do talk to him sometimes. Email, usually. One of us will write to ask how the other is doing. He’s been doing well these last few years. He has a daughter now, did you know that?”

Daniel smiled a genuine, painless smile, and Tawney was overcome with gratitude. Even with so many of his bonds finally broken, he still seemed to bear too much, except in moments like this one. “I did not know that. Perhaps I haven’t been reading the missives from my mother carefully enough.”

Tawney reached into her dress pocket, feeling for her phone. “I have a picture, if you’d like to see. Her name is Sara. I think she’s three now. Or maybe four.”

Daniel nodded, and Tawney flicked through her phone until she came upon the girl in question. Sara had a tangle of messy black hair and big round eyes, and she was smiling wider than a mile for the camera, which was how Tawney knew Teddy must be the one taking the photo. Sara’s mother held her, and even as young as Sara was Tawney could see how similar the little girl and mother would look. But there was something of Teddy in her round little face too, a mischievous tilt of her head and the sharp corners of her upturned mouth.

Tawney offered Daniel the phone and he gazed on it seriously, nodding. “She looks like a handful. But a very fun one. Is that her mother in the picture there with her?”

“Yes. Her name is Holly. She has an auto shop, I think. That’s how Teddy met her, through cars somehow. I don’t remember everything he told me,” Tawney said, darkening her phone with the press of a button and returning it to her pocket. It slid from her fingers oddly heavy and hit the bottom of her pocket with twice the force she had expected.

“Do you regret it?” Daniel asked, in his Daniel way, without any of the hesitation he ought to have or had even just displayed when it came to the topic of Teddy.

“Regret what?” Tawney asked in answer. “Ending my marriage? Not having children?”

“Whichever you prefer.” Daniel watched her with no shame or intrusive curiosity in his eyes. His face showed only attention, sharp and direct attention that never wavered in its focus on her.

Tawney smiled, even though the conversation was nothing to smile about. She smiled because it felt oddly good to be in this space with Daniel again, the free space where anything could be said or wondered or shared. “I don’t regret it, no, Daniel. It wasn’t right for me. It wasn’t what God intended for me in the end. He had other things in mind.”

“I had forgotten even to ask,” Daniel said, giving her a small smile in return. “What do you do now, to fill the days?”

“I’m a nurse at the hospital.” Tawney’s hand went to her wrist, rubbing it gently. She had bumped it that day, rushing down the hall to find an escaped patient. The man was very old and very ill, but neither quality prevented him from taking off when the mood struck, and he could get surprisingly far in a few minutes. “It’s a stressful job, but I’m always glad for it at the end of the day. There are so few jobs in this world where you just do good for people. In that regard I’m very lucky, I think.”

“I think the hospital is very lucky to have you, Tawney.” Daniel shifted, glancing back at his apartment. A small white shape stood at the door, a triangle with two smaller, sharper triangles atop its head. Even at this distance, Tawney could feel the green-eyed glare touch her.

“Mister Biten, I presume.”

“Yes. It’s about time for her evening meal. If she doesn’t have her Smooth Loaf before bed, I’ll never hear the end of it,” said Daniel, shaking his head. The tone of his voice sparkled with affection. He and Mister Biten had a long relationship, then, long enough for them to have routines, appointments, expectations. Tawney felt silly to be jealous of a cat, but there it was.

“It’s been very nice to talk with you, Daniel. I didn’t…” Tawney trailed off, wondering what she meant to say. Her first instinct had been the truth, the honest fact that she’d been missing Daniel for years without realizing it, longing for this person who could be the repository of her trust the way no one else could. They were of a piece, the two of them. Their thoughts ran together like two streams into a great river.

But she couldn’t say that. Not only because it sounded silly, but also because it was too much too soon. It would always be too much and too soon, even without the old concerns of growing too close to one’s step-brother-in-law. Now she just felt too old herself, afraid to pull everything apart for even the most beautiful feeling.

Daniel was watching her, she noticed. His eyes moved gently over her, the lightest she’d ever felt someone’s gaze, but his attention was as direct and unbending as a well-made arrow, and as piercing. “It’s alright, Tawney. We’ll have more conversations.”

Tawney’s own words echoed back to her in Daniel’s voice, and for a moment they were years ago again, together in the Holdens’ backyard, speaking for the first time, speaking of rain, and God. “Daniel, wait!” Tawney said, skin hot then cold again with the thought of that conversation and its generous ease. “Did you ever get to experience it? The rainstorm, I mean?”

Daniel nodded, just once. “Many times now. I even have a favorite season: late summer. It’s a time with plenty of rainstorms. And every time I experience one, I think of you.”

The quiet hung lightly between them, almost silent but for the low hum of insects, matched by the low hum of cars on the highway just beyond the apartment complex. It was a good quiet, with space for both of them to exist without anxiety for a few seconds while they let the quiet lap at their ankles like a gentle tide. Quiet like that was rare enough in the world, and even harder to share, Tawney thought. It grew between the two of them as naturally as a flower, blossoming into something inherently beautiful, something that existed with the sole purpose of being beautiful.

A door slammed shut somewhere on the far side of the pond, and the moment snapped. Its tattered ends hung limply between them, and Tawney wanted to cry. Instead she smiled. “It’s been nice to see you, Daniel. I’m sure Mister Biten’s getting hungry and it’s about time for me to get some sleep.”

“Then off to bed with you,” said Daniel. “Good night, neighbor.”

“Good night, neighbor.” Tawney let the word roll off her tongue, but it tasted funny. She never called anyone neighbor, not Faith or Callie or Charlene. It was a silly thing to call your neighbor, because it was something you both already knew and in fact was the whole reason you knew each other. It was the sort of thing Daniel liked to say, something that concretized the invisible bonds of the world, a reminder of what was expected and what was supposed to be understood about a relationship.

They walked together to their shared patio. Mister Biten grew more and more menacing as they drew nearer to her. Her face was oddly skinny and sharp-edged for a cat’s, her body small, wiry, and bristly, as if she wore the fur of another species entirely, stretched over her cat form. Daniel gave the cat a shallow bow, and then turned to Tawney, giving her the same bow, so serious and straight-faced she couldn’t avoid laughing. “Until another day, Tawney.”

“Until another day, Daniel.”

Tawney slid open her door and stepped inside. As soon as she closed the doorwall behind her, the apartment became oppressively quiet. It seemed impossible to do anything now, except go to bed, which really meant lie awake and wonder why Daniel was here, why they had been put back on the same path, so many years after their roads diverged.

In the morning Tawney discovered that she had left behind a glass of wine on her deck table, out all night and full of bugs when she found it. She’d forgotten about it entirely. Half the night she lay awake, listening to every sound on the other side of the wall, transformed now that they were Daniel, rich with new significance. She wondered what he watched on his little television, when he liked to go to bed, whether Mister Biten bothered him in the night, how early he got up. Daniel possessed of a whole life was a Daniel she did not know.

When Tawney finally fell asleep, she dreamed of standing on a beach, the water coming up to her ankles. It was a beautiful beach, with teal blue water and golden sand, and above them both a sky that stretched infinitely to a cool grey-blue horizon. A tropical beach, new to her. Tiny fish glittered around her ankles, catching the light through the shallow water, each one like a living jewel. Around her the air was filled with bugs and butterflies, just as colorful and alive. Desire rose up within Tawney, flooding out from a long-hidden burial place. She wanted to go deeper into the water, so she did. She stepped out beyond the rocky shore and plunged beneath the waves, not even taking a breath.

Under the water there was another world, as wondrous as the one above. Coral of all colors sprang up from the rocks, fish dancing through the curves and caves and tendrils. It was an abstract painting, an incredible kaleidoscope of color turning and turning and turning. Tawney forgot to need to breath, and let herself be borne into the color and the light, her fingers trailing along the rough rocks and smooth scales all around. The deeper she floated, the easier it was to go on, until she went so far and so deep that she couldn’t remember the shore. Great ancient creatures swam around her, whales and even stranger things, but Tawney wasn’t afraid. They were of a piece, she and all these elder beings. They were here together, and here for the same reason.

When she woke up, Tawney lay in bed for several minutes longer than usual, wondering what possessed her to dream like that. She heard a few quiet thuds from the other side of the wall, quick steps and a door closed gently but firmly. She waited a few minutes longer, listening for any sound at all. When none came, Tawney got up and began her day.


	2. You're A Part Of It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel meets Jon Stern for dinner. Jon is a little silly and a little sad. Daniel reassures Jon and himself that the world is still a place worth loving.

Daniel was surprised to find the college library as busy as he had ever seen it. Students sprawled across couches and bowed their heads over open books and bright laptops. The pressure of so many people near him was overwhelming, creating an extra layer of static in his brain, but he tried to be glad that the students felt safe and comfortable congregating within the warren of dusty shelves and unremarkable books. He himself was only passing through.

  
Daniel struggled to explain to others why he became a teacher. He was not a sociable person, even after years off the row, and anyone who knew a bit about the priorities of the American people knew that teachers received very little compensation for very much labor. An added difficulty in explaining his choices came from the fact that no other person in the whole world had known or loved Kerwin with the absolute, unbending devotion with which Daniel had loved him. With which Daniel still did love him.

  
Consequently, no one else saw Kerwin the way Daniel did, which is to say, everywhere and in everything, even years after his death. The conviction to teach (although Daniel found himself reflexively avoiding words like “conviction”) was born out of the sight of Kerwin, brilliant, beautiful, buried Kerwin, in the hearts of the other students Daniel encountered when he enrolled himself in community college a few years after his release. Everywhere he turned, it seemed Kerwin was there in the faces of young people prone to mistakes and capable of surpassing and sometimes surprising wisdom. Daniel was addicted to the light of them, just as he had been addicted to the light of Kerwin.

  
Several members of his family expressed a loving skepticism when Daniel pronounced his resolution to push through a 5+1 BA-MA program and move into teaching. Managing a classroom was a far cry from collecting orders in a warehouse. And yet their doubt did little to dissuade him. A few times in the depths of years 3 and 4 he would start to give them some credit and question his attraction to the vocation, as he questioned everything. Then in the classroom or on the news or in a crowd on campus he would see Kerwin, like a sign or an angel, divine in his certainty, and Daniel’s faith would be renewed.

  
Now here he was, two years a graduate and a professor of English at a community college. If Daniel were a man to take satisfaction in proving people wrong, he certainly would be pleased. But because he barely even noticed the expectations of others, Daniel found little remarkable in his work introducing the world of letters to the young and unformed (and the old and bored). Day-to-day Daniel was concerned with the simple mechanics of living, keeping up with his work, discovering new and better ideas to share with his students, and caring for his cat, Mister Biten, while avoiding the steel trap of her jaws.

  
It was very hard to live. Despite years and years of practice, it was very hard to live. Part of this was far outside of Daniel’s control: the world was at the push-and-pull mercy of endless crises and catastrophes, changing before he could even get a handle on it. Disaster, though, wasn’t the greater part of Daniel’s troubles. In fact, the disasters made it easy for Daniel to circulate through the world unsuspiciously. A traumatized man on a traumatized earth hardly signifies.

  
It was the small things that made Daniel feel like a tiny boat on a storm-tossed sea. Changes just below sightline, surprises hiding around corners of familiar places.

Like Tawney living in the apartment beside his. That was a surprise sunk as close to his heart as one could be without killing him instantly. At first, when he’d seen her at a distance, crossing the parking lot or chatting with a neighbor, he’d denied the evidence of his senses, so fallible so many times before. Visions, even Kerwin, now came to his doorstep with less frequency than they had early in his release, or on the row, but they still came upon occasion, and so he knew his mind could summon the people he loved to him with ease and dangerous believability.

  
When he saw her on her patio, though, Daniel could no longer deny that she was the real Tawney, and that she lived beside him in this dingy yellow apartment complex. He began to believe in her precisely because of what was unfamiliar and unbelievable about her. The Tawney in his mind had had no opportunities to change after the last time he met her in that lonely hotel room in Paulie. She was perpetually wounded by his and Teddy’s and the rest of the world’s depredations.

  
This new Tawney was aged, new lines folded into her face telling him of late nights studying for exams and long days in the ER lifting up the sick and the injured. She still wore soft white dresses and sweaters, her hair still hung just to her jawline, and she still wore a pendant cross at her throat, but she bore all these familiar qualities in a new way: she wore them as if she were comfortable in them, not as if she wished to disappear behind them. Her body belonged to her and was more than a waystation on her course to Eternity.

  
Daniel could only hope he appeared so transformed to her. It was easier than he thought it would be to talk to her. She was admirably open, she had always been admirably open, and the space around her was welcoming, her voice, her thoughts, her specificity. He was comfortable there, despite the history that hovered behind both their words.

Funny that she should have appeared last night, when tonight he went to face that history in a different form entirely.

  
Leaving the library, Daniel strolled across the parking lot, no hurry in his step. His last class wrapped up more than an hour ago, he was caught up on grading, and it wasn’t yet five, the busiest time in the college parking lots. He found his car, unremarkable in either wear or appeal, blue paint chipping in some places and perfectly unblemished in others, and got in. He fiddled with the radio for a few minutes before realizing he would rather have the silence, and settled the dial on “off”. Then he set out, passing from suburban street to country road to interstate highway in three or four turns, such was the diverse tangle of Midwestern terrain in this area. It was so unlike the places where he’d spent his childhood that at first he’d not known what to make of it. Farm fields pinched between strip malls and subdivisions until one day you looked up and there were only rows of identical homes anymore.

  
He took the highway west, letting the road carry him unthinking like water until it came time to take the northbound exit that shuffled him onto the bridge. The real river surged beneath him, chocolate shake slurry high from recent rains. The grey sky flashed such dull reflections on the water that they were strangely matte. Daniel didn’t like to look over the bridge while he was on it. The Mississippi seemed an unfriendly body to him, hungry and angry in equal measure, its edges littered with dissolving docks and defunct casino boats.

  
He was over it soon enough and taking another exit to guide him towards the airport. He left the highway a few miles before reaching the coiling morass of airport roads, and came instead to a hotel, ten stories or more. He went inside, taking an elevator to the top floor, and found himself in a spacious, gold-accented restaurant lobby waited on by a small and warm-eyed Indian man. He smiled at Daniel from behind the podium, offering Daniel the benefit of the doubt as to whether he knew where he was and why. Daniel found that perpetually surprising, how often people assumed he knew what he was doing.

  
“Dining in tonight?”

  
“I’m meeting someone, I think. Thank you, though.”

The maître d’ waved him inside. “Go ahead. Enjoy your meal.”

  
Daniel went into the restaurant, letting the entirely new atmosphere wash over him. It was all wood and gold, ornamented railings and colorful wall hangings. The smell of hot, spicy food mixed with an undertone of something sugary sweet swirled around him. Music hummed in the background, almost inaudible. Daniel wondered if the setting was really so special and enticing, or if the rural Georgia boy in him was just easily taken in by a show of the exotic.

  
He scanned the dining room, and then the bar, and found his mark. Perched on a barstool, slumped over a half-empty drink, was Jon Stern, looking more or less as exhausted and disheveled as he always did.

  
Daniel went to him, taking the seat next to Jon. He pointed at the drink corralled by Jon’s idle hand, and said “I’ll have what he’s having.”

  
“Daniel.” Jon Stern was a special person because of the particular way he could make you feel seen and known without ever resorting something so gauche as visible excitement. Now he met Daniel’s gaze and smiled gently. It was a smile that met and mingled with the sadness in his eyes, but never fully won the sadness over. “How have you been?”

“You always go straight to the tough questions, Jon. You might have spent too much time in the courtroom.”

  
Jon laughed, and the bitter edge of it was part of its pleasure, like the half-sweetened chocolate chips Daniel’s mother used in her cookies. He and Amantha would eat them by the handful when they were small, and be sick the rest of the day.

  
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Jon said. “Like how you are.”

  
“I am still a teacher, which I know is a surprise to certain factions whenever they recall it. But it is my vocation, Jon. Isn’t that funny?” Daniel took a sip of the drink newly arrived before him. The cough syrup richness of whiskey whispered to the ginger ale it mixed with, and fizzed inside his mouth. “That I should have a vocation.”

  
“Count yourself lucky and unlucky then, my friend, from one man with a vocation to another.” Jon took the stirring stick of his drink on a little circuit of the glass. The click of ice made the skin under Daniel’s fingernails itch.

  
“The work’s that good then?”

  
Jon laughed again, the bitterness stretched to the edge of bearable, at least sixty percent dark now. “You would not believe-.” Jon cut himself off, started again. “Well, you would believe, but the Average American would not believe how many DAs in this country drop people on death row just because they can.”

  
“As a country we do have something of a fixation on permanent solutions. Usually to our own detriment.”

  
“And moreover the detriment of the least among us. Every time I walk into one of those guy’s offices, I guarantee you he’ll have the biggest, gaudiest cross on the wall, and yet it would never occur to him that what he does unto the least, he does unto his god, though I’m told it’s right there in the book.” Jon caught Daniel’s expression and glanced away, a little embarrassed. “I guess it’s none of my business. Between me and my God is the question of whether He exists at all.”

  
“And with all due respect for your argumentative skill, Jon, I don’t think you want to engage that kind of person in a debate on Biblical exegesis.”

  
“No, I suppose I haven’t really done the research to make my case.”

  
“I was thinking more that you’d want to avoid being run out of town on a rail.”

  
“That too.” Jon took a long drink, dropping his glass onto the bar with a deadly finality. “How is that sister of yours?” he said, drawing the “how” into two lengthy syllables as if he hoped to put off the completion of the question for as long as possible.

  
“Bored, I imagine. That’s what she tells me when she calls. But I think she’s happy. She’s got a purpose down there, looking after Mother and Big Ted.” Daniel pictured Amantha as he’d last seen her, a spring break trip for both of them to Atlanta. She had a new fullness that rounded out her body and her spirit. His baby sister, getting old. And so how old did that make Daniel?

  
“She still live at home?” Daniel admired the roundabout way Jon asked his questions about Amantha. It was another good lawyer skill.

  
“She’s between boyfriends, if that’s what you’re asking,” Daniel said with a smile. “And you?”

  
Jon rested his chin morosely in one hand, staring into the shelves of liquor behind the bar as if they held some secret, sacred message. “I am in the middle of a very long between period of my own.” Jon sat up sharply and reached into his coat pocket. “Though I did get joint custody of the cat in the divorce.” On his phone he showed Daniel a few pictures of a sleek and appealing black-and-white cat, thick-furred and thick-bellied. “Suleiman the Magnificent. Her idea, not mine. Professors, you know?” Daniel looked at him with an arched eyebrow. “No offense.”

  
“None taken.” Daniel withdrew his own phone. “If we’re well and truly in the sharing cat pictures phase of life, then I also have a contribution.” He sought a flattering picture of Mister Biten, but the reality was that none existed. When he turned his screen to Jon, Jon recoiled, sending his empty glass skidding down the bar, the near-shattering making the bartender flinch.

  
“That’s a cat?”

  
“What does it look like?”

  
“A dying weasel? A stuffed animal run over a few times?”

  
“She is terminal, it’s true.”

  
Jon shook his head as if trying to clear the image from his mind. “Leave it to you, Daniel, to start a hospice for terminally ugly cats in your spare time.” Realizing the bartender had confiscated his glass, Jon pushed off from the bar, scanning the dining room for an empty table, which was most of them. “You hungry?”

  
“Sure, Jon.” Daniel was hungry, and he suspected that Jon could really use a little more ballast in his stomach.

  
They sat at a small table near the floor-to-ceiling windows, washed in sunset rays. Daniel had come to be an admirer of the sunsets here. Georgia was perpetually sunny and beautiful, but St. Louis was favored by grand striations of cloud that diffused the setting sun into a rich gradient of gold and blue, purple and red. The banked layers of clouds had distinction. They also broke up the direct force of the sun, and so he and Jon could sit comfortably by the window and not be blinded.

  
Jon flicked through the menu, and Daniel wished he had the other man’s worldly comfort. Not that eating Indian food was exactly ground-breaking, but the strip mall lunch buffet was a little easier to navigate than a long and detailed menu, full of things Daniel hadn’t begun to consider. “What do you recommend, Jon?”

  
“Well, I guess I like to think of myself as a vindaloo kind of man, but to be honest there are days when I fall back onto the standard tikka masala.” This meant nothing to Daniel but he nodded along anyway, taking in the words for contemplation if not comprehension. Jon was deep in the chicken section of the menu, and looked content to stay there, but Daniel allowed himself to wander a bit further afield, investigating the seafood and then the vegetarian section. The pictures that lined the margins of the menu were never as appealing as the food itself, but one caught Daniel’s eye: paneer masala. It looked like tofu in sauce. Daniel had had a few misbegotten encounters with tofu since he began living on his own, and he wondered if it were any better in the hands of professionals. Paneer masala it was. He snapped the menu shut with a sense of perfect confidence.

  
The waiter took their order and departed, leaving Daniel and Jon searching for the thread of the conversation, cut by the cozy distractions of the menu. Daniel took a stab at leading. “Where are you headed next, Jon? Somewhere in Missouri?”

  
Jon nodded, looking out the window as a plane roared overhead, coming into the airport not so far away. “Tomorrow morning, heading south a few counties. It’s not a well-known case, but the client’s been on death row for ten years at this point, after the DA’s office failed to produce even a preponderance of evidence at the first trial. I don’t go out on cases so much anymore, but this one is special. It suggests more than a little corruption at the county level.”

  
“And do you enjoy traveling again?” Daniel asked. He remembered the Jon of his case, whose face sagged with exhaustion, who slept best in airport waiting areas, whose laser focus on the problem at hand hardly wavered.

  
“There really is nothing like sitting in an aluminum tube breathing recycled air with a hundred strangers.” Jon pointed to another plane as it arrowed into the darkening east. “What about you? Have you done much traveling since you took this job?”

  
Daniel shook his head ruefully. “I’m afraid my aeronautical career was cut short by a serious distaste for the whole experience. It’s hard to describe, but after so many years tethered so tightly to one place, departing from the ground itself is a little much for me.” Recalling the panic he’d felt as the earth fell away beneath the plane’s wing still made Daniel’s palms sweat. Lucky for him, and all the other passengers, the flight from Nashville to St. Louis was only about an hour long. An hour was far too long for his seatmate, who kept casting nervous looks between Daniel and the airsickness bag prominently clutched in his hand. “I’ve had significantly more success with car trips, on the whole. Nowhere terribly far.”

  
“That’s what’s funny about you, Daniel.” Jon took a long sip of water while Daniel waited patiently to discover what it was that was funny about him. It could be any number of things, he knew. “So many people if they were in your place, even other people we’ve gotten off the row, they’d want to travel, to go everywhere they’d missed while they were inside. But you’re content with this: a secondary role in a secondary place.”

  
Daniel folded his hands on his lap, considering how best to respond. Jon Stern was a good friend, and a better lawyer, but he did not quite see Daniel, and he sometimes said so with a unthought bluntness which Daniel attributed to his East Coast upbringing. “Life is a very demanding undertaking, and I can only carry out so much. And it has a way of surprising you, even when it’s very small.”

  
“That’s true. That’s very true.” Jon stopped there, but Daniel could see more thoughts working their way across his face, so instead of speaking he studied his fork. It was dull and heavy with ridges all around the handle and water-stain splotches from the dishwasher. Holding it as if he were about to eat, Daniel was reminded of the weight of his mother’s favorite silverware and all the Thanksgivings and Christmases when she would bring them out to complement her best dishes.

  
One Christmas when he was thirteen and Amantha was six (or thereabouts) it had snowed in Paulie, a fantastically rare occurrence. The event was so exceptional to the both of them that they’d insisted on eating Christmas dinner on the front steps so they could feel the snow fall on their faces, building up into delicate drifts on top of their peas. It didn’t take long for Amantha to get too cold (and too intrigued by the prospect of cookies) and she begged Daniel to retreat with her inside. Before they went, Daniel stuck his spoon in the lawn by its handle, hoping to measure the height of the snow by it when they woke up.

  
By the time they were done with breakfast and presents and pictures on Christmas morning, all the snow was gone, and so was Daniel’s spoon. Janet wasn’t happy, and Daniel promised he’d find it for her, but a week of searching the yard high and low yielded nothing. The silverware set was short forever after, Daniel taking a plastic spoon as his mark of shame at each holiday, until the year he graduated high school.

  
“Daniel?” Jon was still there, across from him. Or maybe it was that Daniel was still here in the restaurant with Jon, however far his mind wandered. “Daniel? The food’s here.”  
“Oh. Yes. Thank you, Jon.”

  
The food was quite good. Daniel admired the elegant long grain rice, so light and almost sweet. Each grain fell into the next in a cascade, building into a hill on his plate like snow. He thought the orange-red sauce of his curry almost spoiled it, adhering the individual particles together against their will. But when he tasted it, his philosophical objections were easy to put aside. The different flavors and textures played together in a companionable way, warming his mouth and providing a satisfying richness like the best gravy. And the dainty white cubes were good too, though they weren’t anything like the tofu he’d had before.

  
When he said as much to Jon, he was surprised to see the amusement it provided to his friend. “Paneer’s not tofu, Daniel. It’s a cheese.”

  
“Ah. I was too quick to classify on appearance and unfamiliarity. The classic colonizer’s mistake.”

  
That made Jon laugh even more.

  
They outstayed their dinner a long time, holding the table until the sky became a silky violet and the lights of the city grew lively in the distance, blinking out Morse code messages to anyone mad enough to listen. Daniel counted himself lucky not to be a member of that contingent, although the line was always shifting, coming so near to him on his lowest days.

  
“Earlier you said that life has a way of surprising you, even in small ways. Are you speaking from recent experience there?” Jon asked, back in courtroom mode, though he always treated Daniel as a friendly witness.

  
“I did run into something of a surprise yesterday, and not a very small one. I’ve been living in my apartment for about a year, and never met my next door neighbor. Until last night.” Daniel could see Jon’s interest grow with every word, impatience too at Daniel’s circumlocutions. He aimed for the same qualities he sought in his students’ writing: the push and pull of a story well-told. “I saw her sitting out on her patio, taking the evening air, and I decided to introduce myself. Which is unlike me, except that there was something about her that made me especially curious. Especially drawn to her. Like a moth to a flame, if you’ll pardon the cliché.”

  
“And?” Jon’s impatience was gratifying, an end unto itself.

  
“And I came to find that my next door neighbor is Tawney.”

  
“No!” Jon stared at Daniel in wide-eyed, open-mouthed amazement. “No way.”

  
“It is she. In the flesh.”

  
“You talk a big talk about avoiding excitement, but somehow everything finds you, doesn’t it?” Jon picked at the last grains of rice on his plate, jabbing them across the stained porcelain like a god interfering with ants.

  
“Yes, it does. I don’t know exactly how to proceed with her now. It’s hard to say what’s best.”

  
Jon dropped his fork on the plate with a clatter and leaned back in his chair. He rolled his neck, a nervous energy in his movement. “As your former lawyer? You should move.” Daniel laughed, but Jon shook his head. “I’m serious. You don’t want to go down this path. You don’t need Paulie dogging you wherever you go. From a legal standpoint, anyway.”

  
“And as my friend?”

  
“As your friend?” Jon let out a long sigh. “I don’t know. I’ve never been privy to your thoughts, Daniel, no one is. And whatever is between you and Tawney, it’s not something that it’s my place to know. But you should tread carefully. You’re a person who draws suspicion by your very nature. And Tawney is the opposite. That’s not a mix that ends cleanly or conveniently for anyone.”

  
Daniel could not disagree with any of this from a logical standpoint. Jon was the person who offered him clarity and certainty, knowledge of the world and workings that was otherwise withheld from him. But Jon did not know what Daniel did, about the moth he and Tawney caught the night before. He had not witnessed its departure into the sunset air, or, better still, the light that coursed within its body and within the hands in which Daniel held it. The light that was only revealed because Tawney. Because she was there. Because she had been unafraid to speak with him.

  
Jon sought a great light, in Daniel’s view: the light of justice, clearing a path into the future. But Daniel also knew intimately how the light of justice melted away other, softer illuminations: the light of grace foremost among them. And grace was what Daniel sought, above all else.

  
“Look, whatever you do, however you decide to handle this, please be smart and take it slow, okay?” Jon was not exactly pleading, but he was right outside the bounds of it, engaging in what might be called fervent requesting.

  
“That is reasonable, I think.” If Daniel did not know exactly how to pursue this in a smart way, he hoped that his face would betray nothing as it usually did.

  
“If you get yourself into trouble around here, you know who’ll be first in Amantha’s sightlines, once she gets through with you?” Jon didn’t need to point or gesture, the implication was clear enough. “And what about Teddy?”

  
“He has a new wife now, and a daughter, in Florida.”

  
Jon sucked at his front teeth with a sharp pop. “Florida man, huh? You’d better hope he stays there.”

  
Daniel suspected Jon misunderstood his intentions towards Tawney. Or perhaps over-projected them. Jon’s protectiveness included a broadening of all the flaws and foibles of the people he loved; Daniel had noticed this. It allowed Jon to intervene more fiercely, fight harder, and sometimes conclude too quickly. It was what kept Jon and Amantha on the same wavelength, on the occasions they had been.

  
“I appreciate the concern, Jon. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  
“Thanks, buddy.” Jon stood and stretched, taking the paid-up receipt from the table and putting it in his coat pocket. “You mind if we wrap things up? I’ve got an early morning tomorrow.”

  
“As do I.”

  
They left the restaurant together, talking of lighter things. Jon Stern was back in one of his baseball phases, a recurring fixation that ended whenever his favorite teams declined and reappeared when their stock rose again. Daniel could not name a baseball team if he tried. He wanted to say the St. Louis team was the Cardinals, but he wavered on the edge of uncertainty. However, hearing Jon talk about the numbers, the players, and the endless boring rhythm of the games was eminently soothing. As they rode down in the elevator, Daniel watched his reflection and Jon’s in the mirrored interior, Jon miming a stunning swing, and Daniel smiled. It was never not good to see Jon Stern.

  
Someday there would be a world without Jon Stern, without Daniel either, and yet something of Jon Stern would live on, immovable and unbendingly moral. Daniel imagined the hit Jon was describing as more metaphor than reality, Jon taking up a hundred causes, a hundred lives (Daniel’s among them), and launching them free of the shadow of death. It was a strange image to consider too literally, but luckily Daniel did not count himself an overly literal man. He had been struck back into the world of the living thanks to the work of Jon Stern, and everything he did after was a consequence and commendation of what Jon had done to free him. It was a gift and a burden, and at times Daniel was unable to feel any gratitude for it.

  
But now he felt a tremendous sweep of gratitude and he almost thought he would weep right there in the hotel lobby, with the sleepy, bored looking staff and the one or two old newspaper-perusing men all looking on.

  
“It’s good to see you, Daniel, like always.” Jon took Daniel into an ungainly one-armed hug before he could resist, both of them careful not to upend the carry-out containers of leftovers Jon had pressed on him at the end of dinner. “Keep in touch. If I come back up this way, I’ll let you know.”

  
“Thank you, Jon.” The lump in his throat was pressing his voice back into his chest, but Daniel forged ahead. “For everything. I hope you know that I do not take my life for granted, not these days.”

  
Jon took a step back, wavering between speech and silence, seeking some elusive response. “It’s your life now. I just got the ball rolling.”

  
In the car after, Daniel allowed himself the space for tears, but they did not come. This time he let the radio play, nothing he knew or attended to, but it provided a hum of pleasurable voices. They brightened the city lights and drove back the dark, and they provided a cool, clear barrier to protect him from the roiling aspect of the Mississippi when he went over the bridge. He didn’t give the river a single thought.

  
The parking lot at the apartment complex was very full, almost everyone at home at a time like this, and Daniel circled a few times before he found a spot. He engaged in a fumbling struggle to unlock the front door while his hands were full, his nervousness compounded by the yowls of Mister Biten, which began as soon as she heard the jingle of his keys. When he made it inside, she was hunched on the kitchen counter, where she was specifically not allowed to be, her sharp face peering around the corner to glower at him. He put the leftovers in the fridge and prepared her dinner. She ate it slurpily and as a show of gratitude bit his toe hard enough to leave a dent.

  
Daniel decided to go out on the patio, where Mister Biten wasn’t. He stood in the dark and had no fear of it. This was a homelike darkness, draping its comforting black wings around him. The lights of every ground floor apartment diffused it, the hum of traffic filed its edges soft, and in the sky above Daniel could even see a single star. It hung there, faint and unmoving, and so Daniel was confident it wasn’t a helicopter.

  
The world was a halved and broken place, everything around him was a sharp reminder of that, even the single lonesome star, separated from all its brethren by the messy pollution of gas station lights and football field illumination. Safely blanketed by darkness, letting it press him from all sides in a comforting embrace, Daniel loved the world without waver or compromise. He let his spirit wander far out into the night, rising above the rooftops, high as the planes coming from across the river. Not far from there, he imagined he could see Jon Stern, leaning back in a hotel armchair flicking through bad TV channels and pausing on worse shows, falling right into his old traveling life. Distantly, he could see Amantha, eating a late dinner with Janet and Big Ted, sharing the latest gossip from Thrifty Town. There was Jared in his dorm room, without a doubt studying, and definitely not goofing off with friends. Far to the south he saw Teddy, his wife, and his daughter sitting out on their lawn, slapping away mosquitos in the hot and heavy air.

  
And here below was Daniel, living out a secondary role in a secondary place. And beside him was Tawney.

  
Daniel returned to his body with minimal effort. He meant to reenter his own apartment, go to sleep and be ready for class in the morning, but instead he hesitated, gazing on the doorwall and window of Tawney’s apartment. There was no light behind the doorwall, her living room dark and closed off, but behind the blinds of her bedroom window little butter yellow fingers flickered between the slats. Candlelight.

  
The Daniel of another time might have crept to the window and tried to look inside, but that temptation was faint and only half-formed. Inside his own home, Daniel took a few minutes to rearrange, gathering up piles of paper overturned by Mister Biten or his own negligence. The imposition of order was satisfying but exhausting, and so before long he went to bed.

  
Daniel dreamed of a warm and inviting grove, not unlike one he’d been to before, in dreams and in life. The grove in this dream had the distinction of being entirely untouched by other people, however, its grasses growing high and tangled and the branches of the trees bending low to scrape at the top of his head. He picked his way to the center of the massing trees and found a flat, soft place to lie and gaze up at the sky. It was day and yet he could see a tremendous field of stars and galaxies, a whole universe spinning infinitely on invisible axes. The great orrery whirled above him, the sun never set, and the light never changed. He saw it all with a gentle detachment, a play a friend had written and invited him to see, but also one in which he was only superficially invested. It did not move him to tears, but it soothed him. It asked nothing of him, except to watch.

Morning was brought to him by the teeth of Mister Biten on the softest part of his hand, more reliable than any alarm clock, and Daniel awoke and set about his morning routine, an unknowing and integral part of the vast system he’d witnessed and already forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it only took me one. entire. year.


End file.
